Mico CARE Cen­tre as­sists ed­u­ca­tors

Min­is­ter of Health Dr Christo­pher Tufton (left) is in discussion with Daemion McLean, chair­man, Ja­maica So­ci­ety for the Blind, at a World Sight Day health fair, held at the Ja­maica So­ci­ety for the Blind’s Old Hope Road of­fice in St An­drew on Thurs­day THE EF­FEC­TIVE de­liv­ery of the spe­cial-ed­u­ca­tion cur­ricu­lum was the fo­cus of the two-day Mico Univer­sity Col­lege Child As­sess­ment and Re­search in Ed­u­ca­tion (CARE) Cen­tre’s sixth Bi­en­nial Ed­u­ca­tion Con­fer­ence, which took place on Oc­to­ber 13 and 14 at the Ja­maica Con­fer­ence Cen­tre in Kingston.

More than 350 ed­u­ca­tors from in­sti­tu­tions across the is­land took part in the con­fer­ence that aimed to em­power in­struc­tors at the early-child­hood, pri­mary and se­condary lev­els, by equip­ping them with rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion and method­olo­gies spe­cially de­signed for the spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme.

It dealt with read­ing chal­lenges, math­e­mat­ics dis­or­ders, gen­der-based learn­ing, man­ag­ing dis­rup­tive be­hav­iour in stu­dents, and the im­por­tance of teach­ers pro­vid­ing the best qual­ity ed­u­ca­tion pos­si­ble for their stu­dents.

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, Youth and In­for­ma­tion Se­na­tor Ruel Reid, who opened the con­fer­ence, said the Gov­ern­ment was committed to im­prov­ing the spe­cial-needs sec­tor, and that solv­ing the chal­lenges in the lo­cal ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor re­quires the con­certed ef­fort of all stake­hold­ers. “This con­fer­ence aims to sup­port and chan­nel th­ese joint thrusts by pro­vid­ing a plat­form for dia­logue be­tween re­searchers, prac­ti­tion­ers and pol­i­cy­mak­ers in the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor, thereby as­sist­ing in the im­prove­ment of ed­u­ca­tion through col­lab­o­ra­tion,” Reid said. He ac­knowl­edged that the spe­cial-needs sec­tor re­quires more sup­port in en­sur­ing that teach­ers are “highly qual­i­fied and com­pe­tent and are will­ing to serve stu­dents with high-qual­ity pro­grammes that are de­signed to meet the spe­cial needs of all our chil­dren”.

BEST IN THE BUSI­NESS

The Pres­i­dent of The Mico Univer­sity Col­lege, Dr As­burn Pinnock, said that among its ob­jec­tives, the CARE Cen­tre aims to as­sist gov­ern­ments in the re­gion in plan­ning a cur­ricu­lum that will ef­fec­tively guide the learn­ing and in­struc­tion re­quired by spe­cial needs chil­dren.

“It is against this back­ground that we have brought the best in the busi­ness to­gether ... to share ideas and net­work as we seek to find an­swers to the myr­iad so­cial chal­lenges that af­fect our chil­dren in Ja­maica and the Caribbean,” he said.

The Mico CARE Cen­tre is Ja­maica’s lead­ing pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tion, of­fer­ing di­ag­nos­tic and ther­a­peu­tic in­ter­ven­tion ser­vices for chil­dren with ex­cep­tion­al­i­ties, and pro­vid­ing spe­cialised sup­port and ed­u­ca­tion for par­ents, teach­ers and other care­givers in Ja­maica and the English-speak­ing Caribbean.